#okay now I am thinking about going to student health services and I’m fucking terrified

[nope-body]

.

[saidbyyou]

The Suicide Hotline doesn’t work.

Hi. Depressed, anxious person here. I’ve recently called the suicide hotline that everyone links around here - you know the one. 1-800-Unhelpful. And - spoiler alert: it is incredibly useless.

People who link the damn suicide / crisis hotline have never actually called it. It is hilariously understaffed, its persons are highly untrained, and most importantly: linking the suicide hotline isn’t a substitute for ignoring the politics surrounding mental health in your community.

I’m mostly talking about the United States here. But I’ve recently realized that I am not okay and that I cannot handle the mental load that I have right now. Coming to this realization is extremely, extremely difficult - just admitting I can’t handle this is devastating. I called my university’s Counseling Center and booked a triage appointment; this is just an appointment to see how urgent your needs are. This is how my appointment went:

Counselor: Are you gay?

Me: No, I’m pretty straight.

Counselor: Okay. Do you have plans to kill yourself?

Me: Not really, I’ve just been sort of wishing that nothing loved me so I wouldn’t feel obligated to keep existing.

Counselor: Okay. So, we put you on a waitlist. It’ll probably be three months before you see someone.

So, 1. We can have all kinds of conversations about like, how the university’s counseling center doesn’t exist to help students, it exists to prevent a PR scandal for the university, but this is about mental health. My university sucks. BUT ANYWAY.

Three months is way too long for me to wait, so I went ahead and called my insurance. My insurance is super cheap and does not provide any mental health services. Okay. At this point, I broke down and I called the hotline because I didn’t know what else to do. This is how that went (after all the are-you-in-an-actual-emergency talk):

Counselor: What’s going on? Me: I’m just having a lot of panic attacks and I don’t know how to handle all the things I need to handle.

Counselor: That’s valid. Are you planning on hurting yourself?

Me: Not really. I would make problems for anyone around me if I did that, so I don’t have plans.

Counselor immediately became disinterested. She took longer pauses, asked me some questions about how I managed my anxiety, and eventually said something like, “It doesn’t seem like this is a good time to talk. If you need additional resources...” I don’t know what I did to make her think it wasn’t a good time - I thought maybe it was because I called a Crisis Hotline and I’m not going to kill myself, so maybe it’s not a crisis?

Which brings to question how you gatekeep what a crisis is. But anyway.

I tried to look at free or low-cost options.

Free option 1: University offers group counseling. I went to group counseling and told the other people what I’m feeling, what I’m dealing with. Group counselor’s suggestion was to “ride a bike sometimes”. ?????

Free / low-cost option 2: looked at sliding scale clinics in my area. The only one that I could feasibly attend has me on a waitlist. It could “be about a year”, according to the receptionist. 

I don’t know what to do at this point. I have no idea where to turn. Mental health services are so important and yet they are SO understaffed - everyone just links this damn hotline without actually understanding that it’s useless.

At this point, I’m gonna talk to my primary care doctor about possibly getting some kind of antidepressant prescribed because, bro, how am I supposed to do this thing? I do not have the mental capacity. And I am TERRIFIED that my doctor is just going to think I’m farming for meds, so I have zero idea how the fuck I’m going to have that conversation.

Reach out to your local politicians about mental health - don’t just reblog a stupid Tumblr post. Talk to your friends and family, make sure they’re okay. If you have the mental load to spare, shoulder some of their load when you can. If you’re in a position like me - looking for mental health services but unable to find any, I’m up to talk. I’m not a counselor. I’m hurting too. But I’ll do my best.

But bro this shit sucks.

[deniigi]

(Rachel) thank you for answering! no, I don't really have any specific program in mind yet, I was mostly curious about the process. my dumb high school in eastern canada has the audacity to discourage post secondary education?? my guidance counselors, who have their jobs based on one (if not two!!!) university degrees say that it's expensive and a waste of time because most grads leave the province. they just want us all to work in the lumber industry that rules the province (1/2)

RACHEL YOU STICK IT TO THE MAN SWEETHEART

Seriously, I got this same shit, time and time again from counselor after counselor and supervisor after supervisor.

So let me explain where the fuck these guys are actually coming from so you don’t have to let only spite propel you to grad school like it did me (there are slightly more healthy propellants, like passion, curiosity, genuine desire to contribute to human knowledge, etc. Altho I am 110% going to sneak ‘spite’ into my acknowledgement section in my dissertation)

Okay, so actual, real talk. Let’s talk grad school (Master’s and PhD–although hey, undergrads and finishing up hs seniors–most of this shit is applicable to y’all too)

1. These folks are saying grad school is expensive because it kind of is expensive.

To this I say: yeah, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s just gonna take a bit of work and some compromise.

So I don’t know where you’re planning on going to undergrad or what your financial aid situation is, but my whole thing is that if you can make yourself or already are eligible for a postgrad scholarship or grant, you’re already doing hella towards your being a feasible candidate for that degree. Because I had a really good GPA going into my Master’s, I was eligible for an internal grant, and then, because I worked my ass off and got a high GPA my first semester, I got a fellowship. That covered my tuition, so all I had to do was deal with my cost of living and I was comfortable with taking out a loan for my two-year program to deal with that.

I want to be clear on 2 points here: I was only able to cover my tuition with my grant and fellowship because I made the decision earlier on that I was fine, absolutely unspeakably fine doing my Master’s at a mid-tier school (a state school, as we say in California, as opposed to a private college or a UC). I personally went to a very working-class school and I was really glad I did because those first tier, Ivy Leagues, and private schools are 1. so competitive it is literally detrimental to your body and mental health. 2. FUCKING expensive–and not for any damn real reason. Listen. If you’re getting an MA or an MFA, no one gives a shit where you do your degree, it’s all about tailoring the most comfortable learning environment for yourself. I personally do not believe in that fucking elitist big-name college bullshit because there is no guarantee that a fancy, expensive-ass degree from a big-name will get you a job over someone who went to a mid-tier. It just doesn’t work like that.

Anyways, so. To make things even more affordable, I also super fucking recommend working while doing your program if possible (no more than part-time, otherwise you’re begging for burn out). Besides being able to buy burritos and not have to pinch pennies 24/7, working lets you make some friends, build professional skills, and have a break from the academic work.

2. Hella students who start grad school don’t finish it.

Or they take 2 thousand years to do it and end up crying over their nearly-finished-but-not-quite thesis at the kitchen table for approximately 2 hours every night before bed.

That kind of makes the investment of your time, money, and energy seems kind of not worth it compared to the number of doors that your postgrad degree would (or would fail to) open up to you.

So. Here’s the thing.

If you want to go to grad school, you need to tell yourself that you are in this shit to win it. You gotta give yourself some very clear guidelines and have a backup plan if shit starts going south.

All I’m saying is that you should be honest with yourself and ask yourself why you’re doing it. If it just to not pay your student loans, that’s not a good reason. If you’re doing it because you don’t want to work yet, that’s not a good reason. If you’ve never not had school and the thought of not having that to build your routine around gives you anxiety, so you think, “I’ll just do another degree, I’ll be more ready to enter the real world in 2 years” STOP. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Don’t go to fucking grad school (I swear I will get to why. Just trust me on this one for right now)

If you decide you want to go to grad school for a legitimate reason (to build skills, to be more competitive/marketable in your field, to make a contribution to human knowledge, etc.) then make a plan for yourself with a timeline and at least 2 back up life plans from the start. That way you don’t get stuck in the way too common loop of having to take year after year of extensions to finish research/writing.

And 3, and most importantly: Grad school is the WORST THING for your mental health fucking EVER.

Okay, know that I say this as a grad student two times over and that I’m not saying this to discourage you, period. I’m just saying it before some asshole throws it at your face or before you’re met with a horrible revelation.

Multiple serious studies have been done on post-graduate students and they’ve found that grad students are something like 6 times more likely to have mental health issues than the gen. population.

that sounds very scary, and I can tell you right now that it is fucking terrifying and, having survived round 1 and currently surviving in round 2 of this bullshit, it is absolutely true. I have not met a single person (and I have a huge circle of postgrad folks in my life) who has not had mental health issues appear or become triggered or worsened by their second/third degrees.

But here’s what else I will say. It takes a certain type of person to excel academically in our insane school systems and that type of person is not exactly healthy to begin with. Academics and academically minded people are kind of perfectly wired to be susceptible to mental health problems. We just want to be the best (ever. always.); we are perfectionists, we have imposter syndrome (if you’re a human–those people who don’t have this are sociopaths and you need to avoid them as much as possible).

Most of us end up with some kind of anxiety or depression, straight up. Myself included. And it can get bad. I’m not even gonna joke about that.

So again. You have to be honest with yourself and think about your boundaries, your triggers, and what services and support you have at your disposal to make this shit happen anyways.

Because we all know you’re gonna do it anyways. It’s just a matter of getting a support system in place, getting meds when you need ‘em, getting help when you need it, and knowing your limits and how to manage your self-care and burnout.

So. This has been Grad School: Full Disclosure with Matt. I hope that you/someone gets some decent, honest advice out of that.

I know it’s a little scary, but I have to emphasize that the friends I made in grad school and the kind of thinking I am now capable of doing has literally changed my life for the better and I do not regret going to grad school despite all the shit. Have not ever, will not ever. 

I am a huge proponent of post-secondary edu and all I want in the world for you folks who want to do it is to help y’all do it without too much physical, mental, and financial strain on your persons, and that shit is doable so long as you go in with as much info and as practical expectations as possible.

Because that shit was absolutely worth it (to me). At the end of that road, there is nothing as amazing as looking at your degree and your thesis and your friends and skills and being proud as fuck because you fucking did that. You did. And you’re capable of so much more than you ever thought you were.

Anyways, you go Rachel. Show ‘em what’s what if that’s what makes you happy.

[girlbookwrm]

more dvd commentary meemee

@padmedala did you really think i wouldn’t?

You asked about “1) DWEH ch.6 when Bucky drops out of school” 

I am choosing to interpret this as the roughly 500 words between:

Mr. Barnes stands up from the table so abruptly that his chair almost falls over...

and 

...Bucky’s staring at Steve, and Steve knows what he's seeing, what he's thinking. If Judith lives, she’s probably gonna be like Steve: something easily breakable, full of sharp pains and sharper regrets. But that’s never stopped Bucky from liking the hell outta Steve. Bucky likes Steve better than Steve likes Steve, for Christ’s sake.

Because this is exactly the kind of shit I’m talking about when I say that this is Steve-POV, but it’s Bucky’s story. Steve already wants to join up, and yeah, he’s been 4fed, and that’s a bummer for him, but there’s not much by way of a Story there, you know? Uncle Buck gives up his future to try and save his niece?? Bucky “I don’t know that war is ever worth it” Barnes getting drafted??? That’s a fucking STORY.

this got long again (unsurprising) ...

this was a pretty practically minded and story-driven choice that came about because:

I was wondering, on a practical level, how Bucky got drafted so late in the war. I was working on the assumption that in that TFA scene, he’s shipping out for the first time (which is debatable, but that’s how I chose to interpret it). We know from Bucky’s service number that he was drafted, so I was wondering whether he got lucky and just didn’t get called up until ‘42 (given his luck, unlikely) or if he had an exemption from the draft (because he was a student??) that went away (because he dropped out???) which led to the whole Judith subplot.

I wanted the Barneses to have a reason to still care about their uncle (and by extension, Steve) when he gets to the future. More than just “oh he’s that famous guy we’re related to.” I was partly basing the story on a family story of a great-great uncle who fought for the Union during the Civil War, served his time and got sent home just in time for his brother to get called up. Now, his brother was terrified to go, so my great-great uncle went down and enlisted in his brother’s name and served a second tour and the point is that if he woke up in 2012, I would absolutely buy that man (and his boyfriend, if he had one) a beer.

So yeah, it was a kind of story-problem-solving decision that was weirdly pragmatic, but also it hit on some emotional notes that I really wanted to touch:

The reactions of Bucky’s mom and dad, because the last war affected both of them pretty badly, and to see their son go off to yet another war?

gives Scott Proctor a moment to be a cool human. I really liked being able to include the note that Scott had told Bucky ‘Don’t you ever enlist, pal. You got something special, and I’d hate to see a war get mud all over that.’ This endeared him to me, as a character.

give a moment to draw a parallel between Judith and Steve, because yeah, Judith is probably going to struggle with not-dissimilar health problems, and plenty of people have told Steve that he’d have been better off dead. Sometimes Steve thinks that. So it’s kinda powerful to have Steve look Bucky dead in the eye and say “you’re right to give her a shot at life” even though that should be fucking obvious.

As a final note, this is another one of those scenes where there’s a lot happening in Bucky’s head. He’s feeling a little selfish and a a lot bitter and Extremely Fucking Scared. He’s feeling like an asshole for feeling that way, and feeling like he should’ve done this weeks ago, and maybe he’s waited too long, and maybe it’s all gonna be for nothing. He’s wondering if this whole “doing the right thing” business is just easier for Steve, or if he’s just even more of a masochist than Bucky realizes because damn this hurts.

okay i’m gonna stop now this has gotten OUT OF HAND.

[mllemusketeer]

The Paper That Made Everyone Hate Me

Hey you guys asked me for this backstory for the self-insert verse, so here it is. I am going to HAVE to post this on Ao3. It’s getting too giant to do otherwise. 

Okay. So I’ve had a bunch of curious requests about what the hell I wrote in a paper that pissed both Megatron and Ratchet off. The short of it is that it’s a long story. The long of it is this:

In grad school (at least in the sciences), you don’t pay the school. Often, the school should pay you. Now, with the economy fucked up, often it doesn’t quite work this way, but for PhD students like me, it usually still works like this. Mind you, your actual wages put you well below the poverty line, but usually you can sorta make it work.

The standard arrangement for this is that you work for the school on a part-time appointment either in research or teaching. The school passes itself a check for your tuition and health insurance and assorted lovelies, and then passes you a considerably smaller check with which you are supposed to somehow make rent and feed yourself. Research happens every so often; far more common is getting a position as a teaching assistant, or TA, for a class. Being a TA often sucks; you do all the shit the professor doesn’t want to do, which is largely being the intermediary in the merry war the professor and the students perpetually wage over what should constitute sufficient effort to earn a passing grade. You have (often, though I’ve worked with far better profs who do involve their TAs in class design/decision making) limited ability to affect policy, but if anything goes really wrong with your class, it’s your fault. Also, they will jack your teaching load up as far as they possibly can between semesters, and god help you if you attend an institution at which the TAs aren’t unionized. You will be screwed.

But it pays tuition.

An extra god help you if you get the morning labs.

Which I do.

7:30 am, to be exact. Three of ‘em.

GAH.

Anyway, so it was the fall semester before the Paper That Made Everyone Hate Me. I was teaching a lab class. It was August. It was fucking hot, interspersed with thunderstorms, and for the gritty icing on the shit cake, dust storms too, which are like thunderstorms if you replace the entire rain thing with horrible blowing dust. The light outside can go from sunny midday to I-think-I-saw-this-in-Interstellar brown in about 5 minutes, which is as much time as you have to dive undercover after you get the weather service alert to when the storm hits. They’re gross. But I digress. The point is, August around here is the armpit of the year.

There had been some confusion with the rosters of my three classes. This one student had apparently been repeatedly misplaced. They didn’t wind up in my lab, but had been listed there for a few hours while this was awkwardly sorted out. I went ‘meh’, because it wasn’t my fault, and I couldn’t do anything about it, and I didn’t particularly care whether or not the dude was in my lab, not if I didn’t know anything about them. Turns out I should have paid attention.

Motto of my life, really.

Anyway, there was this field trip. It was on a weekend. It involved the TAs driving those godawful 15-seat vans that handle like bricks as we took the kids to the botanical gardens (yes, if you are in college, chances are your TAs call you ‘the kids’ behind your backs. They learn it from the professors. Besides, it reassures that one TA you’re inevitably older than. Yes, you’re probably older than at least one of your TAs. Secret lives and all that, right?) and prayed not to die in the like, five mile trip, because have I mentioned those things drive like bricks?

So there I was, driving a white van with the University’s logo stamped all over it, glad at least the damn thing had government plates so I couldn’t be pulled over for rank incompetence, while also praying that said rank incompetence wouldn’t kill everyone in the van, when a giant robot swept down out of a clear blue sky and kidnapped the entire van.

It’s a good thing I’m a real asshole about making everyone buckle up.

There were screams. I just sort of clutched the wheel, yelled at everyone to stay calm and in their seats. AS IF. I felt like an idiot even as I said it; this was not a situation it was easy to stay calm in—but there’d be fewer broken bones from being flung around if seatbelts were in play, and the ground was already far enough away that jumping had become a very terminal option.

I had just finished signing all the forms, waivers, ect to conduct research at NEST. This included a will. I’d fucking laughed at the thing when I’d turned it in. I was a bioethicist! Bioethics wasn’t exactly risky. Definition of ivory tower, really, and this according to academic researchers. I mean, really. But I signed all the forms, all the waivers, and even drew up the will with a certain amount of amusement. After all, one could always get hit by a bus while crossing the street. A will wasn’t the worst thing to have on hand to fairly distribute my pitiful savings. I didn’t even have a dog at that point.

Now, that will was suddenly very relevant.

Because, if my memory served, the purple and black robot carrying us was probably a member of the Decepticon command trine and we were—

VWOP

—boned. A note for the unexperienced; Skywarp’s teleport ability sucks when you’re a passenger.

We were so fucked. We were so so so fucked. I spent a moment in an agony of guilt over the fact my research project had doomed my students to an early grave. For fuck’s sake, I’d only just had the protocols approved! I didn’t know interviewing Autobots about similarities and differences in patient autonomy would be dangerous! I’d thought my worst problem would be Ratchet, who abruptly seemed like the sweetest, fuzziest person ever, and I’d never even met him. I was interviewing his staff, after all, not him, because he was too damn busy.

I should mention here again that I was very small fry indeed at NEST at that point.

I really, really hoped I’d be seeing Optimus Prime somewhere. Any minute now.

About then, Skywarp dropped us, none too gently. Thank god the van stayed upright, but there was some serious screaming and this time I joined in. If I survived, I thought, clinging to the wheel like it was my best friend, I would have to be surgically removed from this steering wheel, because I was never letting go.

Which was when I realized we were on the ground again, and had a functional van. I slammed the accelerator—

—and a claw came down and punched through the engine like it was a slice of bread. Not Skywarp’s. So much for that. Before I could decide what to do next, the roof of the van rolled up like the lid of a tin of sardines with a horrible noise of splintering plastic and screeching metal and I was looking up at Megatron.

There were many more intelligent things I could have said.

There were even more profane things I could have said.

What I actually said was a very small, “Oh dear.”

Megatron stared at us for several long seconds.

Then, “Skywarp! The boy is not here!”

And fixed a glare on me.

What I should have said was, “Due to FERPA, I cannot disclose the presence or absence of any student in this class.”

What I actually said was, “Um. There was a problem with the rosters, I guess?” because I was not about to die for the fucking Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. Whoever the hell Megatron was after was probably well away by now, protected by Autobots. I wasn’t putting them at risk, probably. It wasn’t like any other vans had been nabbed. My immediate problem was not dying and keeping my students alive, and I was hoping those goals would be achieved at the same time.

Look, if I were a really good TA, I’d be able to tell you what my students were doing—if there was any terrified crying or whimpering or if some dude in the back was making paper airplanes to bounce off Megatron’s nose but to be entirely honest, I had no idea. Because I was occupied with one thought, and that thought was that I had to keep Megatron talking. Talking meant no mashing into a paste, right?

“Humans,” said Megatron, absolutely disgusted.

“Yeah the computer system is terrible,” I said, which made him give me a very surprised look indeed. I think he may have expected me to sit there and wait for death, but like my grandmother before me, I am incapable of keeping my mouth shut. “No one knows how to use it.”

He stared at me, then at Skywarp. “Get him,” he snarled, and Skywarp took off, leaving me with about a dozen Decepticons and a very grumpy looking Megatron and a bunch of terrified students.

Hold up, you may be saying. Hold the fuck up right there, Mlle, I do not for a minute believe the universe is so fundamentally careless that you of all people would get kidnapped by Decepticons, why on Earth would they go for your van, and really the best I can offer as a response is Jazz’s after-action reconstruction of events. Which runs so:

There was an epic roster fuckup, and a certain college-age associate of the Autobots  was placed in my section for about six hours. This happened to be a period within which Soundwave hacked the university’s database to see if they could kidnap said associate. Therefore, my name and roster photo were associated with that person, and the general conclusion was that if they nabbed my class, they’d nab the person they were looking for. They got into the syllabus too (making Soundwave officially better informed about the course than many of its participants) and saw there was a scheduled field trip. So Skywarp was instructed to nab the van I was driving.

Leading to what was Officially The Worst Lab I Had Ever Taught.

Megatron was still eyeballing me.

Which gave me the opportunity to do something truly outrageous.

“So,” I said, and unbuckled my seatbelt, then stood on the seat to try and feel a little less short, “It’s a delight to meet you.”

These were words that Megatron in all probability had never heard from a human before. He smirked. That kind of bearings on a human, Jazz later told me, was something Megatron would at least pause for. He was damn well aware of what he seemed like, damn well aware any sensible human would be utterly terrified, and fully aware that the various beings he’d killed over his long, long lifetime were more than capable of this kind of courage. He’d killed them anyway, in service of his Cause.

When Jazz told me that later on, I all but crapped myself all over again, because at the time I read that smirk as a sign that me being stupid ballsy had bounced the van from the category of things that were going to get smashed and killed into one that involved maybe not getting smashed and killed. Maybe earning the respect of the bad guys so they’d let us go. It was a long shot. The long and short of it was that it encouraged me and I grinned back at him and said, “I’m a grad student studying bioethics. I’m fascinated by Decepticon philosophy. Would you be willing to expound on that? I have forms here detailing exactly how I’d use any information you give me, so you are fully informed of the implications, and I’d be delighted with any information you’d care to share!”

You know, even with all the oh shit surrounding the whole ‘kidnapped by Decepticons’ thing, I still think my best achievement of that day wasn’t surviving, but the fact that I actually did talk Megatron into signing the consent forms for my interviews. He read them all, too. I was really glad I’d spent hours refining them. Really, really glad. He asked more questions than the lawyer on my committee did.

But he agreed.

And it turns out, once you get Megatron monologuing? You’re all set. I set up the recorder, pulled out a notebook, and glanced over my shoulder at the students. They all had brought lunches for the botanical garden tour, so we were probably good for about six hours. Bathroom breaks, though… I hoped we wouldn’t have to deal with that.

I didn’t dare do much more than glance at them. If Megatron thought I wasn’t listening—well, I didn’t want to find out. So I sat there and took notes and recorded and asked questions. Megatron monologued. I got a lot of useless military philosophy, but I did get him onto bioethical topics eventually.

The most important of which was patient autonomy.

Which he was surprisingly vehement about. Apparently, a wounded Decepticon has every right to refuse treatment. The philosophy seemed to be if they’re idiots and die, so be it. It’s their right and means one less idiot taking up resources. (Decepticon bioethics, however, seem to place allowing oneself to be subject to experimentation in a different category, as a duty. Decepticon bioethics are weird, but I found this out much, much later.) It was unclear whether this was the result of resource scarcity or was a true philosophy not dictated by necessity, but I wrote it all down anyway.

So I wrote and listened and recorded and shook out my cramping hands and made all the right noises, particularly when Megatron got onto the subject of memory surgery (about which he was oddly vehement) and in short got a spectacular interview right up until Optimus Prime FINALLY fucking showed up and punched my interview subject in the face.

At which I grabbed notebook, recorder, and instructed my students to evacuate the van and fucking hide.

We got carried out of there in the hands of several Autobots, including Ironhide and Bumblebee and Ratchet, and my students were surprisingly happy with me, given that I’d spent the last several hours interviewing the guy who’d taken us hostage, and ignoring them completely. I had a short period sort of in the limelight, but not very long because it didn’t make an amazing story, really, and then a lot of therapy. Rollercoasters are right out for me, forever. A little too Skywarp-esque.

Anyway, after a while I went back and conducted my interviews with the Autobot medical staff and found some very interesting things, namely that Autobots do not actually place strong emphasis on patient autonomy when it comes to refusing necessary medical treatment. Ratchet will hunt you down. This was surprisingly consistent.

So I sat down with this information and the human bioethical literature regarding these things and wrote a paper in which I made three points that made everyone hate me:

1.) Human concepts of autonomy in patient choice to seek treatment and Decepticon concepts are fairly similar, with Decepticon concepts being somewhat more liberal.

2.) Autobot autonomy in patient choice to seek treatment is significantly reduced when compared to human and Decepticon standards.

3.) While Autobot and human ethical standards surrounding consent to experimentation are very similar, and Decepticon standards lag far behind, the attitudes behind whether a patient is obliged to seek treatment influence a far more frequent occurrence at this stage in the war, and are an interesting indication of convergent values in two opposed factions (humans and Decepticons). This is influenced by Cybertronian history as briefly outlined in the introduction.

Literally no one liked this.

Ratchet hated it because it compared Autobot ethical mores to Decepticon, and the Autobots came out as less respectful of personal autonomy, which was probably his fault as CMO.

Humans hated it because apparently “with Decepticon concepts being somewhat more liberal” constituted an insult. How dare I compare them unfavorably to aliens. How dare.

And Megatron?

Megatron hated the implication that humans and Decepticons were in any way morally similar.

It was a tiny paper. Teensy tiny. Ringed round with disclaimers that this was comparing one eensy bit of human bioethics and Decepticon cultural expectations, that in no way was I expanding the observations to other parts of Decepticon activity (I did get KIDNAPPED while researching this guys, I do not have warm fuzzys for the cons, thanks) but everyone skipped right over that and flipped their shit.

Got me grant funding though. 

[ceaselessly-into-the-past]

brooklyn

Last night was pretty good.

I’ve been technologically out of commission for the last few days for a couple of reasons, the first of which is that my phone finally broke. I say ‘finally’ because for the past year the screen has slowly been parting ways with the main body and I’ve been waiting for it to fail, like how neighbors in a nowhere town wait for the local unkempt, over-the-hill drug dealer to finally be crushed by their own shady small-suburbia dealings. The second reason was that my laptop, the morning after my previous post, suddenly stopped detecting the local wifi. Had I been religious, I would’ve suspected that it was some karmic or some I-smite-thee curse from the heavens for speaking against my mother.

But no. As Old Mr. Frank Schuster was finally arrested for the possession and vending of narcotic substances by the local patrol officers the community nicknamed Jesus, Buddha and Mohammed - named so because they were never there when they were most needed - I was able to get a new, older-model phone. And the IT department found that my computer had caught the hiccups because I had recently changed the account password, leading the system into a limbo where it recognized neither my old or new passwords. No karma or godly strike-downs. Simply a small, reversible error.

The real world is sometimes so wonderfully simple.

What happened after that, though, is the actual subject of this post. The day was testing day - undergraduates were processed through schedules and cycles and small, uncomfortable rooms with small, uncomfortable people to assess their understanding of harmony, intervals, chord progressions, proficiency in piano playing. Those who were clueless and couldn’t do anything that was asked of them ironically got the best part of the deal - they simply walked in, explained that they had never taken any classes or lessons on any of this, and they were told that well, in that case, you’ll be put into Theory 1 or Ear Training 1 or Piano Fundamentals, and were sent on their way. Those who had some idea of what was on the test pages, who had a chance of skipping useless, basic material and placing in a higher-level class - that was where the competition brewed. A silent, near-subconscious energy that simmered in the testing halls and assessment rooms. How little of this can I miss? I’m sure that I remember how to conduct in 5/4 time. Remind myself of the right hand fingering for a two-octave C major scale on piano: 1-2-3-1-2-3-4-1-2-3-1-2-3-4-5, 1-2-3-1-2-3-4-1-2-3-1-2-3-4-5, 1-2-3-1-2-3-4-1-2-3-1-2-3-4-5. I heard earlier that fourth species counterpoint was centered around suspensions, but that was from that one kid who I don’t trust so really, there’s no way to verify that as truth, so I’ll leave that one blank and return to it later, when my desire to get into Theory 3 will override my disdain for them and I’ll inevitably start by writing a half rest followed by a 5-4 suspension. 

The spirit and mind ticked with quiet fury in the hours between 10 am and 3 pm, and so afterwards was our time to let them breathe. After eating, I began digging into my self-given reward by joining two friends - J.P., a composition major whom I’d met before, and the hilariously-named George Foreman, not of George Foreman grills - in finally watching Sergio Leone’s 3-hour Western epic The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. The cinematography transfixed us, the spectacle pulled us out of our consciousness and into some bubble of wonder, and Ennio Morricone’s score lifted us as if we, too, rode horses and carriages through the periphery of the Civil War, guns at our sides, mouths as smart and hearts as burnt as those of Blondie, Tuco and Angel Eyes. For me, it was an arrival: to Spaghetti Westerns, to pre-old age Clint Eastwood, to the dusty, analog 60′s epic. It wasn’t life-changing so much as satisfying that something like that is now part of my consciousness.

Afterwards, J.P. and I, as well as Dongxu, an international violin student, were called on by Sebastian, another cellist, to do the improbably foolish thing of following him into deep Brooklyn at 9 at night. Normally we most likely would’ve declined, but Sebastian had had some issues recently with some dickwad who he had used to be friends with, but had since ditched when he went off the mental deep end. The last I had heard of him, the guy had sent out a mass email around his school containing erotic fanfiction of a girl he liked - clearly, he hadn’t improved. So, given that fact, the four of us joined him, and made the journey from 65th Street to the 72nd Street station in pouring rain, perhaps walking towards something unfortunate and horrible. But we were kids. We weren’t perfect machines - we needed to taste danger to know to never walk blindly into it. But also because it was admittedly fun to do something you absolutely know you shouldn’t. I suppose it comes from the irrationality of the human intellect.

The train sighed and screeched and tunneled its way through downtown Manhattan like a mechanical snake, permitting passengers only to demonstrate its terrors and raw power coursing under their feet.

‘You know what we should do,’ J.P. said, in his paced, muted way, ‘is go see my mom’s old house.’

‘Her old house?’

‘Yeah, she grew up in Brooklyn. She lived there fifty-some years ago. It’s in a good neighborhood.’

‘Okay. Sounds good.’ Sebastian, lanky and awkward with a big pile of curled hair on his head, gave a thumbs up, clearly feeling better already. Danger can do that to a person. ‘Ask her for the address and let us know.’

‘I will once we get there, there’s no service down here.’

‘I swear to god, if it’s far away and we get killed by some crazy man I’m going to fuck you up.’ Dongxu spoke with that accent that comes to mind when you think of the Asian stereotype of the 50′s - the comical affliction that turns every English vowel into something strange that could possibly have meaning in Chinese.

‘I guess it won’t matter because one of you will be dead,’ I said.

‘Why?!’ Dongxu looked at me from across the aisle accusingly.

‘Well J.P. is white as hell. And you’re obnoxiously loud.’

We laughed. It was true - J.P. was white as hell, and Dongxu was obnoxiously loud. 

The subway crossed into Brooklyn, and in six stops we arrived at Franklin Street, where we would transfer and go for another stop. Except we didn’t, instead following Sebastian through the turnstiles.

‘You fuckup, we didn’t transfer.’ Dongxu punched Sebastian in the arm. It was still raining as we left the station.

‘It’s okay, it was only for one more stop.’ Sebastian looked around as if to find some reference as to where we were, despite never having been there. Dongxu huddled next to J.P. while he texted his mom, awaiting an update on how terrified he should be.

‘Guys, it’s a forty minute walk from here. Do you want to do this?’

‘Yeah, totally! Let’s go.’ Sebastian took the lead as we followed, umbrellas raised and shoes slapping wet against the cement sidewalk.

J.P. and I took to discussing the movie we’d watched - in particular, as one would expect, about Ennio Morricone’s score. At first we hummed the two major themes - the famous one in the opening credits, and also what I suppose was the ‘action’ theme that plays during many of the horse-riding and chase sequences - in relation to his thoughts on them from a compositional standpoint, but soon enough the conversation bled and dissolved into flat-out trying to recreate the score using our voices in the rainy, turbulent night. We scored our little walk through the dark streets of Brooklyn, overshadowed by dripping trees and washed by the light of signs and the occasional spotlight, to the strains of music meant for dashing, grit-hardened men firing revolvers from the hip, exacting revenge and struggling, competing, fighting for a trove of Confederate gold. There’s a certain charm to that grossly false equivalence.

It was about the time that the amateurish singing and vocalizing had died down that Sebastian later said that he started to feel someone follow us.

‘Ye shihfedhesds.’

‘What was that?’ We looked around. Something in the distance back down the dark street we’d come up. 

‘Cemedsgovheres.’

And then in in that distance: a figure, seemingly an old woman, haphazardly but quickly making her way towards us, hair flying grey in the scarce lamplight and limbs flopping around barely being of any use in her demonlike movement.

We ran. Dongxu found a subway station 0.62 miles away. And we went back to Manhattan never having seen J.P. mom’s old house from fifty-something years ago.

‘How about we go get some bubble tea at that place on 72nd?’ Sebastian offered.

‘That’s closed now,’ we all said. And we sat, talking little, save for Sebastian making small apologies and the rest of us excusing him. It didn’t seem to be something to fault anyone for - it simply happened.

I met Sebastian and J.P. today at a mandatory health and counseling services information session at 9:30 in the morning.

‘Hey, you tired from last night?’ I asked.

‘Yeah. But it was kinda fun, actually, wasn’t it?’ Sebastian looked at me.

I thought about it for a second.

‘Yeah, it was.’

‘Now we know not to go to Brooklyn in the middle of the night.’ Sebastian smiled.

‘Yeah, it’s good we didn’t have to learn it the hard way.’

‘No, we learned it the flaccid way.’

Sebastian and I looked over. J.P. was silently cracking up.

We laughed too.

Yeah, last night was pretty good.